Debates on visa/asylum in the European Parliament – Victor Hugo, visionary

Dear friends of ESI,

On 23 January 2013 a record 224 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), elected representatives from across Europe, participated in a debate and voted on a resolution on the status of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

There have never been more members voting on any resolution in the history of PACE.

This came about as representatives of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev's regime had long waged a campaign against Straesser, who was appointed as rapporteur in March 2009. Most egregiously, Azerbaijan even refused to issue Straesser a visa to visit the country on a fact-finding mission, although he applied for it three times. This was open contempt for the core mandate of PACE. Straesser was also openly and repeatedly accused of being part of an anti-Azerbaijani lobbying effort.

The vote on 23 January 2013 was also remarkable in terms of who voted with Azerbaijan and who voted with Straesser. All 18 Russian members were present and sided with Azerbaijan. So did 10 Turks, 9 Spaniards, 9 Italians and a majority of members from the United Kingdom (7), Ukraine (7) and France (7).

In total, 54 people spoke in the debate. Straesser was accused by his critics of the following flaws:

Not visiting Azerbaijan. "Sadly the rapporteur, Mr. Straesser, who is passionate about this issue, has not visited prisons and prisoners in Azerbaijan" (Robert Walter, UK Conservative).

Walter deliberately ignores the fact that Straesser was denied a visa for three years by the Azerbaijani authorities. Furthermore, in PACE, the UK Tories have joined the same political party group as Vladimir Putin’s United Russia and Ilham Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan Party.

Supporting serious criminals. "If the report is approved … those who deal with human organs and those who deal drugs to fund terrorism can all announce themselves to be political prisoners" (Leonid Slutsky, Russia).

Double standards. "Many of the countries represented here have pretty bad human rights records. Let those without sin throw the first stone. Very few of the countries here could throw the first stone" (Terry Leyden, Ireland).

This argument in fact suggests that the human rights across Europe had become so bad that there was no use any longer of trying to uphold the European Convention of Human Rights.

Empowering terrorists and Islamists. "If you do not want to endorse terrorists and Islamists, vote no to Mr. Straesser's report" (Agustin Conde Bajen, Spanish conservative).

Remarkably, all individuals Conde refers to in his intervention in PACE are people who Straesser's report did NOT consider "presumed political prisoners"!

We recommend to everyone interested to read annotated summaries of the recent dramatic debates in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Azerbaijan:

For Emin this was a personal matter: he had spent 16 months in jail between July 2009 and November 2010. Three days after the vote on political prisoners in Azerbaijan in PACE described above Emin was again arrested following peaceful demonstrations against police brutality.

In fact, the story of dissent and repression in Azerbaijan today offers the ingredients needed for a gripping novel for a 21st century Hugo; just as the recent debates in PACE are waiting for a gifted play-write to be turned into political drama for the stage.

"A day will come when the only fields of battle will be markets opening up to trade and minds opening up to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and the bombs will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of the peoples … A day will come when we will display cannon in museums just as we display instruments of torture today, and are amazed that such things could ever have been possible."

When will Azerbaijani citizens be able to look back at political arrests and authoritarian rule in Baku with the same sense of amazement?

Last week ESI sent an open letter to all members of the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on how to prevent re-imposing visa restrictions for Western Balkan countries.

In a recent report "Saving visa-free travel" we identified the incentive structure for the vast majority of Western Balkan applicants. These are in fact the benefits provided during the application procedure and the length of the review process (for a compilation of up-to-date statistical material on this issue please visit: www.esiweb.org/visaandasylum).

In our letter to LIBE we propose to insert the following text in the Asylum Procedures Directive:

"Countries that have successfully completed a visa liberalisation dialogue with the European Commission, having met all the requirements and benchmarks under such a dialogue, including those related to fundamental rights under Block 4, and for which the visa requirement was lifted subsequently, shall be regarded as constituting safe countries of origin for the purposes of this Directive."

We also recommend that in such cases the decision-making should be short – certainly less than 1 month in the case of safe countries of origin. This eliminates the current incentives for hopeless asylum claims.

All visa liberalisation roadmaps and action plans require implementation of anti-discrimination legislation and policies protecting minorities. Only a country that fully meets these requirements can be assumed to be a safe country of origin. This would establish a direct link between visa liberalisation and the human rights situation in a country.